The present invention relates to the field of Role Playing Games, more particularly an improved method and array of game pieces. There is a long and noble history of war games throughout military history in which fictitious scenarios of conflict are played out utilizing tactical rules for conflict resolution. From these sprang Role Playing Games (RPGs) in the late twentieth century. The archetype and still industry standard is Dungeons & Dragons, created by Gary Gygax (copyright 1979). Myriad RPGs ensued, filling many genres, each with various systems for conflict resolution. Because of their open-ended nature (in contrast to board games or card games), RPGs are very dependent on the use and availability of a large amount of information, traditionally in the form of instruction and database texts or volumes, used in conjunction with dice as a means of chance. Because RPGs attempt to anticipate any possible circumstances and actions gamers may take, the amount of reference material to manage fictitious worlds, storylines, and characters becomes unwieldy. Game play is slowed down by continuous need of referencing data, and furthermore, conflict resolution is distilled down to simplistic chart-based mechanisms that provide little tactical control and dry numerical outcomes instead of qualitative and colorful consequences. Furthermore, the more exhaustive an RPG resource book is, the more studying the referee and gamers must undertake before a game can be played, having the unfortunate tendency of making RPGs unappealing to many potential players.
In the 1990's, a paradigm shift occurred in fantasy gaming. Many players of RPGs opted instead for Collectable Card Games (CCGs), such as Magic: The Gathering by Garfield (U.S. Pat. No. 5,662,332). There was an explosion of CCG variants in the 1990's. These CCGs incorporated fantasy imagery, numerical and qualitative mechanics for conflict resolution, and a means of describing the effects of skills as well as technological and magical powers. In the form of a card game, the game pieces were largely standardized and self-explanatory, minimizing the need for reference books. Furthermore, once a few core game concepts were understood, gamers could utilize a vast array of cards to add extensive variation to their gaming content and style. The ease of learning and the rich tactical interaction of collectable components drew many new players to the genre of fantasy games. The shortcoming of CCGs, however, is a kind of game that is inherently limited to the card-play mechanics with a “last-man-standing” type victory. CCGs also lack the creative narrative created in the enactment of characters in an RPG. Many CCG players have lost interest in such games after the novelty of the imagery and mechanics wore off, as the games did not contain the potential for unlimited adventures and conflict scenarios that RPGs offered.
There have also been attempts at combining the open-endedness of RPGs with the playability of CCGs. An example of this is SAGA's Dragonlance card-based RPG (copyrighted, but not patented), which did not achieve much success largely because it simply substituted cards and the deck-drawing randomness of CCGs for the texts and dice randomization classically used in RPGs. Furthermore, the cards of these CCG-mechanic-based RPG's have often been referential, requiring comparisons to resource books. The result has been games with poor tactical control, limited flexibility, and an alternate form of randomization. There are no widely played games of this RPG-CCG hybrid type.
Many games, including RPGs, CCGs, and board games, use familiar devices—specifically, cards, slide-rules, and dice. While many patents exist regarding card games, few concomitantly use dice, none include cards which may be inserted into slide-rule game devices. An example of a RPG using cards and dice is by Mero (U.S. Pat. No. 5,954,332), however, dice are used to assign values to the cards, and card interactions represent creatures position and potency, not character abilities. Fantasy Baseball by Crowder (U.S. Pat. No. 5,145,173) uses traditional baseball trading cards in conjunction with a standard 52-card deck of playing cards and dice. However, the cards represent only players of a baseball team, the dice do not determine potency of action nor multiple simultaneous outcomes, and the cards are not directly interactive with other game components. Further, while there are cards games and teaching tools which employ word-card combinations (e.g., U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,564,710; 4,419,080; 4,171,816), none employ the alignment of color-coded perimeters to obviate the need for grammar comprehension in the assembly of sentences, and none are directed at combining words to represent magical effects in a role-playing game. Likewise, there are many examples of application-specific slide-rules (e.g., U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,014,438; 4,611,113; 4,241,867; 3,986,002). However, none represent the theoretical function of tools and weapons in a role-playing game, and none claim receiving ports within the sliding component itself for optional modular cards. Furthermore, RPGs and CCGs classically have attrition of life that is bimodal: alive or dead. As points of life are lost in most RPGs and CCGs, imaginary beings do not a lose potency or ability. In no game is a slide-rule used to track life while simultaneously correlating it point-by-point to the abilities or prowess of a player's character. Lastly, dice are employed in many games as the means for generating randomness, suspense, and outcome. Among RPGs, many employ two ten-sided dice read in sequence to generate a percentile, or number between one and one hundred. However, no games to date employ the simultaneous use of a percentile roll and an independent use of the constituent digits (e.g., the one's place), effectively making one percentile roll generate a number between one and one hundred and a second independent number between one and ten.
From this becomes apparent the shortcomings of RPGs, CCGs, and prior attempts to combine the two. A need therefore still exists for a method and system which address the shortcomings of these kinds of games. In view of the prior art, there is a need to develop a system, method, and component set which reduces or eliminates the need of reference materials during play, makes learning the game easy and quick, incorporates graphic imagery, provides tactical and creative control to permit strategic game piece deployment, yet remains flexible and open-ended to maintain gamers interest in a creative storyline. It is also apparent that there are novel ways in which to deploy familiar devices—such as cards, slide-rules, and dice—to facilitate this need. It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide such a system, method, and component set that fulfills these needs.